On Rosh Hashanah, I got a message from a man in Brooklyn. As usual, I was fairly confident I wasn’t going to be interested in him, but we exchanged some passable messages and I knew he would be totally into me – so, I figured, free drinks with a guy who will flatter me like crazy? Why not.

We met up that afternoon for a drink. His profile had said he was 5’10. He was maybe 5’7. Good to start everything off with a lie.

I asked him if I could get something to eat first, because I was hungry.

“It’s kind of complicated, though,” I said, “because I have a gluten allergy.”

I explained what that meant. No wheat, no barley, no oats.

“How about pizza?” he asked.

I looked at him.

“Uh, no, that’s, like, basically all wheat.”

He took me to a weird kale-and-quinoa based place, which I rejected. Then we went to a bar that turned out to have no drinks that weren’t beer. Then we stopped at some pub he loved. That didn’t have food. I gave up. Ok, so I wasn’t eating.

I got a cider. He got a beer. We sat down outside and started talking.

After a few minutes, he told me that he believed in Social Darwinism.

“In America,” he said, “it’s all about what you make of yourself, you know?”

“Uh, actually,” I said, “no.”

I went on to lecture him about the cycle of poverty and how tough it is to get out of, and how fucking hard it is to be poor, and how difficult social mobility is for the past few generations, unlike our immigrant grandparents’.

He immediately agreed with everything I said. He was, suddenly, all for welfare and against the phrase “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.”

Then he mentioned that America was in the most politically dysfunctional time it has ever been in. I told him that, actually, if you look at history, it’s basically always been the same. Sure, the past three years have been marked by the dumbass Tea Party trying to stop any work from being done, but that’s really only been since 2010. Not a long time, by any historical measure.

He totally backtracked and agreed. Like, I mean, America has really always been the same, right? Nothing changes throughout history, just like I was saying. I was absolutely right.

Then he told me that he was really passionate about the legalization of weed. I told him that I agreed it should be legal, but I didn’t really give a fuck – it was hard for me to consider the legalization of weed to be the most pressing issue on the American plate.

At that point, I was just being obnoxious. He asked if I wanted another drink. I said no. He joked that I was a cheap date. I gave him a cursory hug and ran out the door. I thought it was pretty obvious that I was miserable, and actually felt kind of bad that I might have just been really rude.

The next day, he texted me.

“Hey, what’s up?” he said.

“Not much,” I responded.

“I really enjoyed talking to you yesterday! I feel like I might have come off as a hardcore conservative capitalist – if so, that’s totally not me!”

“Nah, it’s cool,” I said, “but, to be honest, I didn’t really feel any chemistry. Good luck, though!”